32 AUGUST 2.4- 9 I' 2. SHOUTS AND MURMURS A PLEA FOR. ßE TTER MANNERS R ADERS of the book called "Show Boat" -it did used to be just a book, without any music or photography or anything-may re- call a scene in which Magnolia Ra venal, while attending the première of a Shaw revival in N ew York, indulged in an altercation scarcely distinguishable from a scrimmage with a minor character named W oollcott, who was described as a dramatic critic. It seems it was ever Magnolia's habit, when emotion- ally stirred in the theatre, to clutch the hand of the nearest person. On this occasion the nearest person chanced to be this fellow W oollcott. ..A.nd at this unwarranted interruption of his atten- tion to the play he replied promptly by slapping the offending hand and then punitively pinching the heroine in a spot not specified by the authoress. At this sudden and unexpected ap- pearance as a character in fiction I maintained an inscrutable silence. Now, once again, friends are sending me marked copies of another novel in which they detect an intention to caricature your defenseless correspondent. In- deed, it is the implication of their ac- companying notes that, just as the late Mr. Whistler took not only umbrage but steps when du Maurier cartooned him in "Trilby" (with the result that the malignant little vignette had to be left out of the story when it ap- peared in book form, and with the further result that the unexpurgated serial parts were thereby rendered dear to the hearts of collectors a quarter of a century later), so I might care to bring sui t against one Charles Brackett for his use of me as a model in "Ameri- can Colony," the brilliant, penetrating, and poisonous novel just published by the daredevil Horace Liveright. In that work it is true that the reader glimpses a character described as "a tremendous man with tiny extremities" and gold- rimmed glasses, "a person who used to be a dramatic critic," a "competent old horror" much admired by readers ad- dicted to a literary style which is either "clear treacle or pure black bile." He is further pictured as holding up a plump hand, in a kind of traffic-cop's gesture, to check any interruptions to his own conversation, and as moving off from a group with some such in- formal remark as, "Well, I find you are beginning to disgust me." In the identifying text one of the characters explains: "Evelyn has never forgiven him because once he had seats beyond hers at a first night, and when he wanted to pass he stood in the aisle and bawled " But no. I must not pollute these dainty pages with a liberal quotation from the Brackett text. I can say only th t this dramatic critic made audible allusion to the excessive cubic space pre- empted by the aforesaid Evelyn's abdomen. "AMERICAN COLONY" had no soon- Il.. er appeared on the book stalls than I found my household eyeing me with something akin to expectancy. There was that in their eyes which seemed to say: "Now at last he will strike back, now the old mastiff will bring one great, punishing paw down on these Pekinese yapping at his heels." Up to now, as Al Smith would say, mine has not been a hurt silence, but rather one of embarrassment, due to my private opinion that, with all the bad-win in the world, these caricatures have made me into rather a charming figure . You will detect this in com- mon between their sketches-an ef- fort to suggest that I have at times been rude in the theatre. But in this ef- fort I think they have failed signally. How could they do otherwise, when I, in my time, have been the most scrup- ulously polite member of the great American audience? An onlooker who would seize upon such minor, superficial, and irrelevant brusqueries as are caricatured above and from them deduce that I was an especially rude playgoer, would, I think, upon enter- ing a street in which sundry men were committing assault, hom-icide, arson, and mayhem, point with horror rather at one innocent bystander and say, "See that dreadful man! He is biting his nails." I object to their sense of values, and claim this as my epitaph: "Here lies all that is mortal, which is saying a good deal, of Alexander \\1 oollcott. He attended three thousand first nights without once coughing or whispering when the curtain was up." O CCASIONi\.LL Y the long- suffering actors strike back. They are, indeed, the chief sufferers. For every sound made by a sibilant audience, every syllable whispered by a gabby playgoer to her escort, is fiung across the footlights as from an amplifier. Indeed, it is one of the perversi ties of the black art called acoustics that no architect has as yet designed a theatre wherein the stage is so exquisitely audible to the audi- torium as the auditorium is to the stage. In her time Mrs. Fiske, loath to intrude on the private conversations of her audience, has considerately had the curtain lowered in the middle of a scene. This was an admirable Mans- field custom which has lamentably been allowed of late years to fall into disuse. Jane Cowl, then, was but following a fine and honored tradi- tion the other evening at The Hub when she halted the performance of her new comedy called "Jenny" so that some chatty Bostonians in the balcony would be free to finish their little talk unmolested by the gabble of the actors on the stage. When the act was over the rest of the audience rose en masse and cheered the lovely Miss Cowl for her intervention in their behalf. The late Henry Miller was more indirect. He had occasion once to silence a fashionable, bejewelled, and loquacious box-party that came to his play for all the world dS if it were some wretched thing by Richard Wagner through 'which the socially prominent were supposed to talk. It was at the theatre in New- port, in the half-forgotten days when rhat Rhode Island town was often used for September tryouts of plays on their way to New York. In the course of the comedy there was a line in Mr. Miller's rôle which alluded to the abiding truth of the old adages. "Including," he added on this oc- casion, with a murderous glance to- ward the dressy muckers in the box, "including the one which says: 'Money talks.' " -i\.LEXANDER W OOLLCOTT